Seriously….wut?
via Reddit
I should avoid stating opinions on things I know little about. Yesterday I expressed the belief that innovative companies like to hire serial hobbyists. Obviously that’s a generic statement, and today the internets found a way to prove me wrong in at least one edge case.
Sometimes, serial hobbyists are just people with waaay too much free time. Case in point: My Little Pony mods.
…seriously.
Watching this video, I have a few takeaways. 1. This presentation must have been practiced enormously (or the guy’s a natural) because it was very smooth. 2. I like the definitions of collaboration vs. cooperation. 3. Though he claims both depth and breadth are important, I notice that he put depth first in his list. He also pointed out that depth is truly indicated by a portfolio, not a resume.
I think this is similar to something I’ve noticed earlier – the ascension of the power nerd. Though it may be limited to companies I am interested in and follow, I have gotten a feeling that what innovative companies are looking for are the sorts of people that create projects, like those out of Make. In broader terms, people that are serial hobbyists (sp?) are the sort that take things to the next level with only intrinsic motivations. I think intrinsic motivation is probably the only way that one will develop that portfolio of work.
Update: It looks like the video isn’t working, so go here for it: http://www.edutopia.org/randy-nelson-school-to-career-video
There is an interesting thread on reddit right now where people are listing the books that somehow changed their lives or at least how they think about stuff. It’s cool and gives me a number of ideas on books to read sometime.
For my own part, I would say books that influenced how I think include (in no particular order):
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
- Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
- Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch (reading this formed my religious beliefs for quite some time, and has similar messages as Stranger in a Strange Land or American Beauty)
- Go Rin No Sho (Book of Five Rings) by Miyamoto Musashi
- On the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime by Immanuel Kant (if you ignore the nationalist/sexist parts)
- Fight Club by Chuck Palanhuik
- The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (even though its a diatribe, it laid to rest any lingering interest I may have had in traditional religions)
That’s all that comes to mind at the moment. It’s always changing, though.
CNN has a satellite image of all the people on the Mall before/during/after? the inauguration. Crazy.
Man, this guy Gonzalo Ramos at MS Research (formerly U Toronto) does some cool interaction research with pen-based computers.
My favorite so far is the Zliding paper. Video demo below.
It’s worth noting this guy came out of the same program (the dynamic graphics project at U Toronto) that generated the recent ILoveSketch app that allows 3D sketching of bezier curves, which also impressed me. Both of these projects were developed under Ravin Balkrishnan, whose other research also appears interesting.
via Procrastineering
Wizards of the Coast recently came out with a Facebook app based on Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition. Well, loosely based. Really loosely based. The game uses some stripped down mechanics from D&D to let you have a character who goes on adventures and accumulate crap. To be honest, it’s not that different from Progress Quest, itself a satirical take on the grinding aspects of roleplaying games.
It’s been near impossible to play this game, which doesn’t help either. It’s servers have been hosed since I started playing, so it’s a crapshoot whether or not you can even get into the game at all.
That said, there is something just fun and cool about having a halfling rogue (named Theros) with a flaming rapier in one hand, a dagger in the other, Burglar’s Gloves and Catstep Boots, and a DEX of 19. ^_^
Level 4 and counting!
So far so good. A week’s worth of classes and work has gone by, and I’m totally excited. I’m taking a class on OpenGL 3D graphics that I was very worried about initially, mostly because it’s been awhile since I did significant low-level programming. Surprisingly, I’m seem to be one of the better positioned students in the class in that regard; a number of students have barely done any programming at all. As a result, it appears the instructor is going to make an effort on meeting everyone halfway and helping the students. I think it’ll be fun; after avoiding anything to do with graphics 5 years ago, I’m looking forward to learning a lot. : )
My other major class is a psychology course on the fundamentals of human-computer interaction. This class will be a lot of work, with a lot of readings every week, discussion, writing, and a design project. The discussion takes place online, and it’s kind of lame. The idea is that everyone completes the readings and then discusses them on a message board….but the discussion is required – you have to prove that you did the readings, and you’re not supposed to write anything that’s already been written. I’m worried that the net result of those policies will be rapid spam-like posts that are very superficial discussion in order to meet the requirements. Frankly, I’d rather just meet in person and talk about it face-to-face….I’ve never had a decent conversation through message boards. : \
On the other hand, the readings and the course materials themselves are very interesting, and exactly what I want to be learning right now. So for me, the requirements aren’t overly burdensome…I just want to really push it and go the extra mile.
Surprisingly, it doesn’t seem like many of the other students in my two classes feel the same, at least so far. Class participation has been pretty low, about what I’d expect from undergrads where no one wants to be on the spot…but this is grad school. I just expected more.
Not much to describe about work thus far…I’m still getting set up and up to speed on technologies. It appears I’ve been committed to a project finally, though. The project is taking CAD models, as described in a low level language, and bring them into a scene graph (a 3d environment suitable for virtual reality displays). Once in VR, we are then to overlay various test outputs as a visualization tool. Assuming a few significant steps are feasible, it should be a straight-forward project. At least, I hope so. : )
nuff said.
